Saturday, October 25, 2014

Tuesday, September 30

I sleep late after picking Steve up at eleven thirty last night.

This morning I feel like my bag is coming loose, even though I changed it yesterday, further evidence that my body must be full of chemo.  This is the kind of thing I know to expect on the weekend coming up, not today.

Interestingly enough, this weekend while Steven was in North Carolina, he was the guest of one of the men who developed the glue used on ostomy bags.  He was part of a team of chemists that were trying to figure out what works and what doesn't.  It turns out that there was a group of people at 3M who had ostomy bags and were giving very precise input on what needed to be changed to make the most effective adhesive that would do the least amount of damage to skin surrounding the stoma.  Steve mentioned that I had been having trouble with the adhesives was thinking it was from the chemo.   His friend confirmed that they are aware of this problem, that there are a series of trade offs that need to be made. It can be made to stick better during the chemo, but the skin would be at risk for excoriation, which would put the user at risk for an infection.  This was useful information to have.

I have a CT scan scheduled for today at one, so Filipa is coming over to help out.  She has been awesome coming to help out so often.

Steve brings me to Rhode Island Medical Imaging for one o'clock, I manage to get one child down for a nap before I leave. 

The scan goes fine, the tech turns out to be someone I went to East Providence High School with.  She thought I looked familiar when I came in, and compared birth dates to be sure.  She was right.  Although many people come by for CT scans every day, she said she seldom sees people from our class.

Things happen as they did for my last scan, but this time I am stronger and a little heavier. 

It is my hope that this scan shows it is possible to have surgery soon. While I can call tomorrow and find out the results, I decide I will wait until I see Dr. Safran.  There is not much I can do with the information before I see him anyway.

I have had to skip lunch for the CT scan, so when I am done, I am very hungry.  Steve takes me to Five Guys for lunch.  I haven't had a hamburger in weeks, by mistake I order a double. but manage to eat the whole thing, no problem.

Knitting tonight was nice, a woman who hasn't been by in a long time stops in.  Her husband is taking a tai chi class that is running the same time as our knitting, and it seems to be helping to bring people in.

Wednesday, October 1

It is cold and wet today, a typical rainy fall day.  When we take our walk today, it is drizzly, but I wear my fuzzy black gloves for warmth.  As we walk, they get a little damp, and my fingers start to tingle.  It gets increasingly worse, despite my attempts at flapping and clapping to get them to warm up.  At one point I get the kids to jog with me in an attempt to get warmer blood flowing into my fingers.  I jog as fast as I can without covering much ground, I need to keep pace with two year olds. 

The only thing that brings relief is getting out of the cold and getting my hands warm and dry.  I am so glad I have a glove wardrobe on this day.

I attend a Prucom meeting in the evening, and volunteer to be on a task force to get the youth more involved and connected to our congregation.  I leave the meeting energized.

Thursday, October 2

Last night I went to bed fully expecting to be up at four this morning.  I slept until seven.  I didn't get that jittery feeling until later in the morning today.

We make pizza this morning, it feels so good to kneed my fingers into the nice warm dough.  This activity makes my fingers warm and tingle free.

It is cold and damp again today, so when we go out for a walk, I wear my fishing gloves.  Before we get back to the house, my fingers are cold and tingly again.  I am hoping for a nice extended Indian Summer.

While we were busy making our pizzas for lunch, my friend Ginny Fox stops by with a surprise for me.  She has brought fox statue for my garden.  He is very handsome with a sweet face.  I love him and so do the kids. We put him in the garden closest to the sandbox so he can watch over the children while they play.  I love that I have a fox from Ginny Fox!

Kaileigh comes over early, goes shopping and makes some dinner, a yummy lasagne.  Her friend Feather stops by with some olive bread.  It is a day of lovely surprises!

When we go to stained glass class tonight, I find that handling large sheets of glass take the heat right out of my fingers, making them tingle.  Somehow the smaller pieces don't bother me as much.  I approach the grinder we use to smooth the edges of the glass very cautiously.  It uses water to keep the fine particles of glass out of the air, so we don't inhale it.  I am afraid it will make my fingers cold, but tonight they are okay.

1 comment:

  1. Hooray for getting to Stained Glass class this week. I know this is something you've been missing other weeks.

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